Bontemps

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

Bontemps, Arna Wendell 1902-1973. American writer whose works of poetry, history, and fiction, such as God Sends Sunday and Black Thunder, established him as a leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance.

Etymologies

Examples

Depictions of what was mostly good about African-American life in the early 20th century were no doubt appreciated by strollers in those enchanted avenues recalled by Bontemps represented by the only historical novel here, "Black Thunder," about Gabriel Prosser's 1800 slave revolt, but as contemporaries of Joyce, Hemingway and, most pertinently, Faulkner, the Harlem writers might have raised a more modern flag.

He was recalling the dawn of the Harlem Renaissance and was perhaps a little dazzled in retrospect—Bontemps was writing in 1965—by his memories of "strings of fairy lights" illuminating the uptown "broad avenues" at dusk.

And I would like to honor the memory of Arna Bontemps, who advised me, years ago at Yale University, on the Harlem Renaissance for my senior honors thesis—and who inspired me to further explore African-American history and literature.